Far Cry 3 was one of the few superb big-budget releases in a year dominated by independent developers.
2012 was not a great year for blockbuster, AAA gaming. Call of Duty sales began stagnating. EA’s competing Medal of Honor franchise stalled out of the gate. The Wii U launched to a tepid following and THQ’s attempts to save the brand ended in bankruptcy. To cap off this somewhat lousy year, the Newtown shootings have reignited the debate about violent video games.
All the strife, however, has largely bypassed the healthy independent game market. These past few years have been very kind to smaller, independent developers, thanks to the resurgence of PC gaming and the proliferation of smartphones and tablets.
Of my favorite three games from the past year, one was a major blockbuster release, one was a middle-tier summer game and the last was an independent, free-to-play project. This spread isn’t indicative of the spread of video games as a whole last year — I played more good independent games than good studio releases — but it instead serves to highlight the best trends from each category.
I also have to give an honorable mention to Hotline Miami for successfully transposing Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive into a messed up little video game.
In a great many ways, Far Cry 3 is a tremendous game. The game world created by Ubisoft Montreal boasts some of the most realistic animal and vegetation simulation ever in a video game.
Hunting deer, running away from komodo dragons and luring tigers into enemy outposts proved to be ghoulishly fun, greatly enhanced by the dynamism of Far Cry 3’s open world. This is a game in which no two people will have the same experience; your friend may have cleared out a base with a forest fire, while you might have freed a bear and let it loose.
The trouble with the game lies in its narrative. Far Cry 3 does an admirable job trying to suggest massive psychological trauma and that all this fun comes at the expense of the native population.
Unfortunately, that aspect of the story is relegated to the sidelines in favor of a generic revenge tale that takes up most of the cut scenes. Without adding more weight to the game’s exploration of violence and Generation Y disaffection, the rest of Far Cry 3 is simply too fun for its critique of violence and gamers to work.
Spec Ops: The Line, on the other hand, manages quite successfully to do just that. Spec Ops, originally posited as an adaptation of Heart of Darkness, doesn’t feature particularly compelling gameplay. The mechanics of the game are off, lacking the precision of most AAA shooters, and the level design is repetitive.
However, all of this is by design, a way through which the designers imply something is not quite right from the get- go. The ill-at-ease sensation gradually increases, as Spec Ops strips away the heroic tropes prevalent in modern video games.
Spec Ops is a grueling, meditative experience: a game that mocks the core notion of shoot-em-ups as utterly childish fantasy, appropriately in keeping with the source material. This isn’t a great game because it’s fun; this is a great game because it’s unafraid to be unfun.
The very best game of the past year, on the other hand, is fantastic because of how fun it is. Less a coherent video game than a series of increasingly outrageous controlled explosions, Frog Fractions understands the very heart of what makes video games enjoyable.
The game starts off as a strange parody of edutainment games before shifting gears and rearranging into something wholly different. The developer has a clear grasp of pacing, timing each new twist and revelation almost perfectly. All of the stages are then strung together with a wacked-out, hazy narrative involving a frog and Bug Mars.
The best way to experience Frog Fractions is without much prior knowledge of the game. The 30- or- so minutes I spent experiencing Frog Fractions were the most fun I’d had with any video game last year.
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